Arab-Israeli Peace Quotes
Oz ofent wrote very effective scathing criticism of the policies of the right wing governmetns of Israel and the ultra orthodox who argued that God gave the Jews Judea and Sammaria which is now the West Bank and has been occupied by Arabs for more than 1500 years.
With this statement, Sadat did what no Arab had ever dared to do—offer to negotiate with Israel. It led to the great peace breakthrough which produced the Arab-Israeli peace.
At that time the Israelis had been rebuffed after offing several major peace proposals and most were convinced that the Palestinians were so fractionated that no one would dare sign a peace even giving Palestinians their own state and sharing Jerusalem as the capital. So they just organized around security needs and walling Israel off from terrorist attacks while maintaining the occupation until something radially changes amongst the Palestinians. The Palestinians and the other Arabs did not want to negotiate either as they felt so weak that they believed they could never get decent terms, and they hoped for some military or terrorist victories where the Israelis would make large concessions to a strong opponent. At the same time there were a few ultra-orthodox Jews who did not want a peace and wanted to do what conquering nations had done throughout history—annex more conquered territory. There were a number of Arab groups, in addition to some Palestinians who did not want a peace at all, as for them there was no satisfactory solution so long as there was a Jewish state in their midst. See {632822} for more on the Israeli attitude then.
